Ghana Maritime Authority DG, Owusu commends LADOL’s Egina fabrication yard
Kwame Owusu, director general of the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), has commended the promoters of the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base (LADOL) Free Zone Enterprise for contributing to the development of the nation’s Maritime, Oil and Gas sectors vis-a-vis the West African Region.
Owusu visited LADOL base with his management team last week to have a firsthand knowledge of the popular oil and gas logistics Free Zone that is hosting the integration yard of a $3.8 billion Floating, Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) oil production platform, otherwise known as the Egina project, as part of the 3-day official visit to Lagos, Nigeria.
The Egina FPSO project was awarded to the Korean-based Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI) by TOTAL Oil Exploration and Production, with LADOL serving as the Local Content Partner to SHI in line with the requirements of the Local Content Development Act of 2010.
“We are quite impressed with the facility we saw in the LADOL Free Zone. We are also happy with the fact that a country of the size of Nigeria does big things and is leading Africa in most of these developments. Because Nigeria has been in the industry for a while, is by this paving way for us. Therefore, whatever we do, we must learn from your example, improve on it and take advantage of the difficulties that you encountered when you started,” said Owusu.
According to the GMA boss, visiting a facility like LADOL is ‘an eye opener’ for a maritime nation like Ghana. “Therefore, we are ready to take this information back to our government to find the best way to go about the collaboration with Nigeria for the benefit of West African region.”
“The collaboration that we are trying to establish with Nigeria today, is such that if we have a project like the one in LADOL coming to Ghana and we don’t have the needed facility, we may decide to bring the job to Nigeria pending when we develop our own and that will enable Ghanaians to benefit from the employments such opportunity will create,” he said.
Showing the visitors round the LADOL facility, Adewole Gege, LADOL base manager, who told the delegates that Samsung is building the FPSO in partnership with LADOL, said the Free Zone also plays host to pipe coating firm, some agro-allied industries and automobile firms that are trying to set up in the zone.
“There are lots of incentives for companies operating in Free Zones like LADOL because apart from the provision of stable infrastructure that may not be readily available in the cities, there is tax holidays and enabling environment for businesses to produce and export their cargo from the zone,” he said.
Gege further said that the Egina project has a completion deadline, which Nigeria delivered ahead of time but still awaits the arrival of the hull of the FPSO vessel from Korea. “Initially, industry players never believed that this project would be achieved in LADOL. The project had lots of multiplier effects as most of the fabrication jobs were not done in LADOL. We had other facilities like Nigerdock that benefited from the project as LADOL alone couldn’t do all the jobs.
He said that the fallen price of crude and devaluation of naira did not affect the project. “The Egina project had about three years timeline but we have been able to complete our side of the project and also developed the facility where all the fabricated parts will be integrated at the arrival of hull by the end of the year. It’s expected that the FPSO will commence operations in the first quarter of next year.
“The project, which has about 10-20 percent Local Content contribution, currently provides direct jobs to over 1,600 Nigerian welders, engineers, and other artisans working on the project site and at the arrival of hull of the FPSO vessel, over 2,000 Nigerians are expected to work on integration yard.
“We are determined to ensure that the next project at LADOL will achieve about 40-60 percent Local Content while the one after will go all out to achieve 100 percent Local Content. This is why we want to build a training school where Nigerians would be trained to work on the facility going forward,” Gege disclosed.
Sunday Umoren, head, Maritime Safety and Seafarers Standards of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), who led the Ghanaian delegates to LADOL base, expressed gratitude to GMA boss and his team for coming to Nigeria and LADOL for receiving them.
He said that as Owusu and his team came to learn from Nigeria, that Nigerian will also be coming to learn from Ghana in other areas. “We appreciate what LADOL is doing in lifting the flag of our nation and for most of us that it’s our first time of coming to the facility; we are impressed with what we saw.
He however advised the promoters of LADOL to sustain the tempo exercised in the development of the Egina project to other future projects. He also assured LADOL of NIMASA support in ensuring that the Free Zone succeeds as the FPSO project has shown that Nigeria has an indigenous company that is determined to turn things around for good.
Uzoamaka Anagor-Ewuzie